Category: personal

I discovered this sweet gelato by Breyers a few days ago through the use of a coupon. If it wasn’t because of the coupon machine spitting out a $1 of any Gelato product, I would have not tried and tasted this sinfully delicious creamy gelato ice cream.

I tell you, it is as delicious as it looks and I promised myself to buy some more when I get to go grocery shopping next time. How tempting is it? Here’s what I can tell you, once you start eating it, you cannot stop yourself if only you are not concerned of your calorie intake. Geezzz this is just one-of-a-kind ice cream even my girls love!

I wouldn’t mind eating this kind of dessert for as long as I know I workout hard and eventually burn the calories I had in the past days.

While Memorial Day is celebrated in commemoration of the Fallen heroes, this is also the time when retailers take advantage of making huge profits by flooding the consumers with their bargains both online and in-store. Most families especially those who have lost a loved on in the battlefield or in the country serving this great nation, they celebrated the occasion by visiting them at their graves, others are barbecuing in their backyard, some are participating the event called “Carry the Load” starting from NY to Dallas. And a few went to the malls or outlet stores to shop and take advantage of the sales.

I was one of them. My girls and I went shopping for home at Macy’s yesterday and bought 7 pieces Tommy Hilfiger bath towels. They were on sale for $7.99 each plus I had a 20% coupon on hand which cost me just a little over $6 each. Also I earned $10 Macy’s money after spending over $55 at their store.

We need new bath towels for the ones we are still using are at least 7-9 years old. They need to be changed because they are getting rough on the skin when we pat dry our body after shower. I did not get disappointed for I got what I wanted to buy although we were rushing yesterday due to severe thunderstorm coming our way!

Now we got enough towels, I can now rest my mind from spending money on them and will do so a few years from now. Tommy Hilfiger is a name brand known in the US, so that I alone, I trust that their merchandise should last longer.

Money is tight these days yet I managed to shop some clothing for me and my girls. They are growing everyday so I am constantly on the lookout for nice yet good deal dresses, undies and other things for them. I am back to shopping at Old Navy store now after such a long time of dodging them because I believed the quality of their clothing materials had declined but with all the deals, sales and clearance prices going on at their store, I find myself going there again.

Last time I went there, I was able to find this super cute skater dress for $1.97 clearance price, large size in children’s department and it turned out to be just 97 cents when I checked out. It fits me good plus the sweet price tag. I did not hesitate to grab it along with a couple items in my hand that time. I bought two dresses actually, same skater dress style but different color and stripes.

I don’t normally find such a price like this but when I do, rest assured… I won’t be going home empty-handed. Believe it or not, I went home that day with 5 items in my hand for just a little over $27 total plus I earned supercash for next shopping of $25 or more. Yes, that’s how thrifty I am when it comes to scouring for clothing deals.

This is my breakfast this morning. I should say, nothing beats Filipino foods. I wouldn’t exchange it for a burger, steak or tacos. To me, it is perfect already. Exactly the food I want to indulge everyday of my life. It was Mother’s Day yesterday but we weren’t able to go out and celebrate outside due to severe thunderstorm.

So what I did is, I spend my entire afternoon in the kitchen making “glutinous suman or budbud” and poto flan. Budbud is near perfect, just need a little bit more coconut milk but it’s good. Gladly, I got all available sides to pair with it like pure cocoa drink, fried milkfish, ripe mango and voila! It’s delicious, tasty and oh so filling!

I made a lot of people drool as soon as I posted this on Facebook, cruel me haha. When it comes to Filipino food, I feel lucky to be able to cook and eat it here despite of the fact that I am not in my home country to enjoy delectable goodies I used to eat when I was growing up! Almost all food that I crave to eat is available at the Asian market except for fresh fish, seaweeds and other seafood that I can only find in the Philippines.

Stores want you to spend your money on them. Victoria’s Secret is one of them. They want you to keep coming back to their store year-round whether there’s a Holiday or normal days. To do this, they send perks to their loyal customers and or members.

Two of those perks I received are coupons for bra and a freebie, they send this to our mailing address a few times a year through a catalog and the other one that just arrived is this $15 of a bra, a freebie for panties and other coupons. While the rest of the coupons look enticing, I would not be using them as they have minimum purchase requirement which I am not willing to spend money in that amount.

I am a wise-shopper so I always go for a freebie or buy something I need rather than what I want.

April 25 myself, my family and a group of Filipinas in our area agreed to gather together and had a picnic near the back of Benbrook Lake. It was such a beautiful day, the weather was perfect for picnic with a group of crazy and fun people that consist of mostly Bisayan-speaking like me. Two of whom speak Tagalog.

Anyway, you know when Filipinos gather, you can expect plentiful of food to be served at the table. Yes, I must admit, we love to eat and eat and eat while chit chatting nonstop. That’s just how we are. Imagine, we live close by yet we don’t get to hangout a lot often. So when we have the time, rest assured, chaos and loud mouths are to be expected.

According to my husband, we brought more food than we contributed. I told him, that’s just pretty normal. We bring food and we take home a lot. Everybody is a winner. We will not go home empty-handed because no one would want to bring back her food. Might as well, share it to others and enjoy the left over at home.

Photo below were the foosd that each of us brought to the picnic. As you can see, there were squid, tuna kinilaw – my contribution, rice, fried fish, chicken bbq, pinakbit- not on the picture, fried shrimp, noodles, eggplant salad, pork adobo, boiled sweet potatoes, pork with carrots. Some desserts like leche flan, maja blanca and sweet glutinous rice.

Looking at the food in the photo, makes you want to think that there was a big birthday celebration or a fiesta going on but no, it was just truly a simple picnic on a beautiful day.

When it comes to eating meals, everybody gets a fair amount of food I serve for them on their plate, well, I am talking about my two girls. My husband will sometimes take care of himself and figure out what to eat in that particular night if I don’t cook him anything. But for my girls, they eat what I give them and it is usually Filipino food.

They are trained eating healthy Pinoy food ever since they started eating solid food. With that being said, I have no problem what to give them these days or I don’t have to think about feeding them differently when I have something freshly cooked in our kitchen. One of the many foods they can eat is native vegetable stew paired with rice, sausage, shrimp fry, salted anchovy or dried fish at times.

Just by looking at their plates pictured below, you wouldn’t think that the ones who are eating the food are half Americans because not all FIL-AM kids eat this kind of food. There are just kiddos that we can’t force to eat what they don’t like to eat.

But my girls, I am super proud of them. You can give them anything Filipino. In fact, they prefer eating my food rather than some American food. However, they love pizza, mac and cheese, pancakes, bacon, hash brown and a few others.

There is nothing fulfilling than being able to perform my goals each week, to workout 2-3x and do my walking exercise 2x per week. To do this, I should think that there is no excuse for me because I don’t go to work and there is nothing else to do during the week. On weekends, I try as much as possible to walk a mile.

In order to be inspired, I bought some active clothing while they are on sale. Getting the right outfit for my intended exercise makes me believe that I am actually exercising and will be more motivated to sweat. So far, I am doing good with it and sticking to my goal which I am loving so much.

I have bought a couple of sports bra over the course of months and probably will be buying more if I find one, a few pairs of active bottoms and also active tank tops. Here’s the latest buy I made at Old Navy. They were on sale but still I paid a little over $75 for everything in the picture.

I decided to buy active outfits for my girls too so they feel they need to be active too and would enjoy more the outdoors by riding their bikes or just playing in the playground. My firstborn is loving her outfits and worn the purple pair right away as soon as I told her I bought her something.

…I shall go back to Old Navy store in a couple days to buy the matching bottoms of my pink and blue tanks/bras. Hopefully the prices would come down by then so I can buy two or more pairs.

Wearing a dress is what I am most comfortable with during this kind of season. I just can’t think of a perfect outfit than a nice, floral printed dress. I have two girls so I am more than proud to say that they are my living doll, who I can dress up whatever I like.

Below is of me and the girls with our beautiful dresses. This was taken at Baptist church nearby during egg hunting on Saturday. It was a bit cooler that day so I decided to put on cute little cardigans to my girls that coordinated with their dresses.

Mind you, I bought their dresses last year when stores had their end of season sale while mine, I have had it for maybe three years now but rarely wear it. One of the many things I like about dresses is that, I don’t have to spend so much time trying to figure out what sort of bottoms and tops to give to my girls in order to match because I am not good at that. With a one piece of cloth, they can easily put it on and I don’t worry about a mismatched outfit.

Photo captured by my husband about my girl crying. I was teasing her and acted I walked away because she wanted me to kneel down and be wrapped with my arms…

Baking might not be very healthy because of sugar, flour and other unhealthy ingredients in it but you can make it healthier by adding some good stuff in whatever you wish to make for your kids or family. For example, this banana muffins pictured below. I used the usual banana bread recipe I can find online but I added two tablespoons of chia seeds and slivered almond nuts to it, not only it taste good but with those two added ingredients makes it beneficial to our body.

Another thing, I recently found that stir-fry asparagus not only is very delicious but also simple to cook. With a few sprinkles of seasonings, viola! You can have crunchy and tender tasty cut up asparagus paired with my nutty muffins. I just loved the combo! I make sure that we have vegetables to eat everyday and or fruits.

You can always choose to eat healthy and at the same time prepare simple dishes for your family. By doing this, it puts your mind at ease because what your family is getting is nutritious!